Embedding Power BI report in public website without exposing Semantic Model

[Rafaela07]

Hello All,

My case:
I'm using fabric's environment for powet bi and I have a report which I want to embed as a link in a website.
To do so, I used the option Publish to web (public).
However in this option I'm encountering a message that indicates that when sharing the link/iframe of the report, I'm also basically sharing the entire semantic model.
My goal:
I want the report to be publicly accessed however I don't want any mal-users to be able to access the semantic model and the underlying data (eg columns that are not presented in the visuals).
Can you give me a direction to handle this?

Thank you in advance,

[v-priyankata]

Hi @Rafaela07 

Thank you for reaching out to the Microsoft Fabric Forum Community.

@vivien57 Thanks for the inputs.

I hope the information provided by user was helpful. If you still have questions, please don't hesitate to reach out to the community.

[v-priyankata]

Hi @Rafaela07 

I wanted to check if you had the opportunity to review the information provided by user. Please feel free to contact us if you have any further questions.

[Rafaela07]

Hi @v-priyankata,

The info were indead helpful to conclude that publish to web is not the appropriate approach for our solution. We are considering Power BI Embedded app owns data with the generation of report-scope tokens, but truth is I'm still trying to read and understand more about this to decide whether it is a bulletproof solution (end user sees only what's rendered in the report and cannot query the model in a way that they could in the publish to web scenario using eg browser developer tools)

[vivien57]

Hello @Rafaela07 ,

Unfortunately, you won't have a native solution with "publish to web." Either you create a semantic model that contains only what you expose...

Or you use PowerBI Embedded (but at an additional cost depending on the architecture you're using).

Don't hesitate to give a thumbs-up if my answer helps you.

Have a nice day,

Vivien

[Rafaela07]

Hi @vivien57 !

Thank you for your response.
That is very unfortunate..
However, can you elaborate more on the PowerBI Embedded option? Are you referring on the Developer Playground option? If so, what security steps can I take there to make sure the semantic model is "unreachable"?

[vivien57 · Accepted solution]

In my opinion, since you don't need security (other than not seeing more than what's displayed in the dashboard), why don't you make the dashboard available on a reduced semantic model (which only contains what you display)?

In this case, access to the dashboard or the semantic model will be equivalent.

Don't hesitate to give a thumbs-up if my answer helps you.

Have a nice day,

Vivien